


Where's My Love?

by Lunardeityastrid



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Inspired by..., M/M, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:34:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27946877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunardeityastrid/pseuds/Lunardeityastrid
Summary: (This is inspired by Where's My Love by SMYL and a little bit of 'The Things They Carried')BTW, I didn't fully edit this so I hope there aren't drastic errors.
Relationships: Hal Jordan/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 6
Kudos: 48





	Where's My Love?

**Author's Note:**

> (This is inspired by Where's My Love by SMYL and a little bit of 'The Things They Carried') 
> 
> BTW, I didn't fully edit this so I hope there aren't drastic errors.

Bruce shuttered at the unraveling silence. He slid his hands into the pockets of his black dress slacks, not wanting to disrupt the order of every neatly placed item. He half expected a voice to call out from around the corner. 

The coldness set in; Hal’s apartment creaking at his absence, maybe even rejecting Bruce who stood still, unable to move, unable to function. Bruce hoped, in some last resort, some grief induced hope, that he would find Hal here. The words said at the league meeting had to have been a hapless joke. They had to be.

A solar flare, John had said. He said it like a soldier, not like the friend Jordan once had. He, Rayner, and Gardner witnessed the long curing flames suck Hal in as they flew away. As they left him to hold it off, Bruce wanted to blame. But the man Hal was, he would have told the other lantern’s to go, that it was the only choice. In Hal’s mind it had to be him, it always did. He was that kind of selfless. He didn’t feel anything, John had said and the waver in his voice finally came. 

He said so much regarding Hal’s death. Bruce didn’t want to believe it, part of him couldn’t accept it. Or at least didn’t want to. 

He held himself together in front of his fellow leaguers, each of them saying how sorely Hal would be missed. They thought Bruce was being his stubborn self, his impenetrable self when he walked away from them. They had no clue he had just lost the love of his life. 

In his private quarters, he took his cowl off, threw it at the wall in blind rage, as strangled sobs stole his breath from him.

Hal was gone and the only proof was an emerald ring that made its way back to OA. 

Now, a few days later, he stood in Hal’s apartment staring at every surface longer than he should, staring at every memory that played throughout the walls like a movie at a cinema. Everything was the way Hal left it. Clean, neat and in order. The air force made him that way, Bruce recalled. 

He passed a photo of Hal smiling and he felt his heart be pulled by the man in the photo. Hal was younger, his youth suspended in that photo, among his friends in flight suits. Bruce, holding the photo in his hands, ran his thumb over Hal’s face as if touching him. Instead he removed a light layer of dust. 

“How old were you?” 

“Nineteen. I just led a squadron for the first time during a practice mission.” Hal was on the couch, watching Bruce, who turned with a surprised smile on his face. The blurriness of tears distorted Hal for just a moment until Bruce blinked them away. 

“That’s young.”

“Tell me about it. I only had my wings for about seven months.” Hal would go on to say how he was the youngest man to reach the rank of Captain, a story Bruce was so fond of. 

Bruce set the photo down; Hal disappeared the moment it touched the surface. His blue eyes were cloudy as he moved to the kitchen. Draped over the back of Hal’s creaking oak chairs was a gray sweatshirt, USAF in bold letters on the front. Instinctively, Bruce picked it up and brought it to his nose. A little bit of himself and a whole lot of Hal in it. 

"You can wear it. Besides it's only fair." Hal was at the table now, Bruce's Princeton hoodie on, sitting so he could watch Bruce.

Bruce almost shook his head, wanting to put the sweatshirt down. Swapping sweatshirts was something they did before Hal left; well Hal took Bruce hoodie from the depths of his closet at Wayne Manor. Hal's soft eyes were protesting otherwise, so he put it on to satisfy the memory playing in front of him. Fabric stretched across his body wrapping him in a hug. It felt like Hal. 

Bruce wished it was. 

"Look at you. I think we should swap clothes more often." 

If Hal was really at the table, Bruce would have steadied his hand on the back off the chair and leaned down to kiss him. But the chair was empty and Hal was gone. 

He made his way through the rest of the familiar apartment. Stopping in the doorway of another room, moonlight shining through open windows, another simple thing tugging at his heart.

The bed. The wrinkled sheets. 

Bruce moved to the foot of it, staring at the wrinkles, at the way Hal's pillow laid crooked the small brown hairs against the white pillow case. He recalled so fondly rolling around, causing those wrinkles with Hal days before his off world assignment.

He climbed onto the bed, the side designated his and curled up. Hal was next to him, looking at him with curious brown eyes.

"You're sad. You shouldn't be, you shouldn't cry. None of that matters anymore." 

"Maybe not to you."Bruce said to the quiet his voice faltering. He grabbed Hal's pillow and pulled it against his body. A swarm of Hal's shampoo flooded his nose. He could hear Hal rolling, getting out of bed, through his closed eyes with tears falling across his nose and onto the pillow. 

For a moment, Hal was still here. He had gone across the street for takeout because he got hungry at two am, because they had the best curry in all of Coast City. He'd come back telling Bruce about the line, about the city not sleeping at night. Bruce would laugh softy before guiding Hal in for a kiss. 

Hal always came back. Bruce found it hard to accept that this time, he would not. 

But he wanted Hal to come back. He wanted to think Hal was off planet thinking of fifty different ways to call Bruce a bastard without kissing him. Bruce wanted him back so he could apologize, so he could kiss him, and ruffle his brown hair and see that smile one more time. 

Softly in the empty room, he said it."Come home, Hal." 

Weight shifted the bed, a warm hand caressed Bruce's cheek."I'm home, Bruce." Slowly he drifted to sleep, a heavy grief induced sleep. 

Racing and thundering against the apartment were fighter jets. Hal stood leaning against the window sill, smiling like a kid on Christmas. He nodded his head towards the window inviting Bruce over. Bruce wiped his bleary eyes as he shuffled across the bed to join Hal. 

Outside, sunlight shining against metal birds, several formations of fighter jets filled the sky. Bruce sighed deeply as he followed them. 

Hal studied his face before looking back out the window."Those are for me, aren't they?"

Bruce nodded. 

"Everyone knew how much I loved flying. Carol did it, I bet." 

There was silence. Bruce didn't know what to say. Hal turned Bruce's face to his with a soft touch. 

"You know I have to go. You have to let me, Bruce."

"Please stay." 

"I'll always be with you. Listen,"Hal paused, his eyes going to the window for just a second. An f-16 roared by and the smile on his face grew."There I am." 

Bruce tried to smile."Just a little while longer."

Hal considered it. He nodded and they continued watching in silence as each jet raced across the sky. Bruce watched with tears hanging in his eyes. 

_"Though lovers be lost, love shall not; and death shall have no dominion." -Dylan Thomas. ___

**Author's Note:**

> I always write in my notebook and the most annoying part is typing it all up.(mainly because there are times, I can't read my own writing😂) 
> 
> I hope this wasn't too terribly sad and a decent read. I think outside of We May Die Tomorrow, this is the only other sad thing I've written.(I have no clue though, I can't keep up with my own stories.) 
> 
> Thank you for reading!❤


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